


into the empty parts of me (her eyes look sharp and steady)

by swu



Series: maybe (in another universe) [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Photographer, F/F, Marine Corps, Root's a photographer; Shaw's still in the USMC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 11:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5246099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swu/pseuds/swu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Root's a photographer who comes to take photos of some Marines (for a Meaningful Portrait Series), and Shaw's really not happy about it ("Meaningful," sure… so Meaningful it's going to wind up in a Buzzfeed listicle)</p>
            </blockquote>





	into the empty parts of me (her eyes look sharp and steady)

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off a tumblr prompt for a model/photographer AU, but I couldn't figure out how to actually logically make one of them into a model, so this happened instead.

This is fucking bullshit is what it is. It’s grief porn, it’s fake and voyeuristic and exploitative. We’re supposed to believe that this is meant to “highlight the toll that war takes on soldiers”? Please. It minimizes it—the pain, the sacrifice, everything we do—down to three fucking photos so that people sitting in their terribly upholstered chairs back home can swipe through them on their phones while drinking their morning coffee and tilt their heads and sigh heavily and think they understand a single fucking thing about what it means to fight in a war.

“A photo series of soldiers’ faces before, during, and after their tours”? Honestly, what is that? These are their _lives_ not a fucking before-and-after makeover comparison or a brochure for a plastic surgery clinic. It’s gross. This woman has no respect and she doesn’t even know it. She thinks she’s doing something good, something _meaningful_. Well, she’s not going to weasel her way into Shaw’s regiment and take advantage of _her_ soldiers like this, no way. Doesn’t matter that the order came from above to let the photographer tag along because it would be some good press for the USMC, would “humanize the war” to the civilian public. God, what is it with people? They all think you can look into someone’s eyes (not even! it’s a _photograph_ of someone’s eyes!) and see into their soul or some shit, see something _real_ , a _feeling_ or a life lived… No, idiots, what you’re seeing is light refracting off a cornea and the dilation of a pupil in reaction to physical stimuli like, oh I don’t know, a camera flash.

 

**…**

 

Apparently some of the guys are actually excited for this photographer woman to come and shoot them. Idiots. They’re idiots, too, and Shaw can’t believe she has to go and protect them from their own idiocy. Everybody wants to be a celebrity. They’re about to be shipped out to defend (and possibly die for) their country, and yet they still want their fifteen minutes. Shaw’s not going to guarantee that _she_ won’t end up shooting them before this is all over.

Idiots.

 

* * *

 

Shaw storms into the room where Root’s setting up, fully ready to give the woman a piece of her mind, until she sees that Root’s balanced precariously on a chair, trying to affix a backdrop to the ceiling. Root stretches a bit too far, and suddenly her foot slips off the chair, and suddenly she’s falling, and suddenly, before Shaw’s even realized that she’s moved from the doorway at all, Root’s crashing into Sameen’s outstretched arms.

“Well hello to you too, sailor,” Root breathes, her face inches away from Shaw’s. Her lips stretch into a smile that is most _definitely_ not an appropriate reaction for someone who very nearly tumbled to her death. (Okay she probably wouldn’t have died, but still. Why is she grinning like she _wanted_ to be a total klutz, like she planned this all along?). “You could at least buy a girl dinner first.”

Shaw looks down and notices she still has one hand basically gripping Root’s ass and the other splayed firmly across her torso. She clears her throat and averts her eyes for a moment as she hastily steps back.

After Root straightens herself, adjusting her shirt slightly where it’s ridden up her abdomen, she looks back up at Shaw and says warmly, “Why don’t we try this again.” She holds out her hand. “I’m Root.”

 

**…**

 

Somehow Shaw finds herself sitting on a stool in the middle of Root’s makeshift studio, staring straight down the barrel of a Hasselblad HD3 with an expression somewhere between bewilderment and disdain stretched blatantly across her face. Root had assumed she’d shown up to get her portrait taken, and for some reason, maybe it was the echo of Root’s ribs still burned into her hand, Shaw hadn’t corrected her. And now that she’s sitting here she has no idea how to bring up what she’d originally come here to say without seeming like a total freak… so she just stares forcefully at Root. Not angrily, just… forcefully. Like if she stares hard enough she can figure Root out, can crack her open under her gaze and make her just _get it_.

It had all seemed so simple when she was storming over here—she was going to yell, Root was going to look sheepish and embarrassed, or maybe she’d get offended and want to defend herself and start yelling too, but in any case that would be that and Shaw would leave. In no scenario that Shaw had played in her head beforehand did she end up with delicate fingertips ghosting across the helix of her ear as they tucked a stray lock of hair behind it.

Suddenly everything is suffocating; it’s too much, too intimate, too close—the fluorescent soft lights pointed straight at her face from every side are too bright, the camera lens is too close, Root is too close, much too close. She’s standing behind the camera but not looking through it—she’s staring directly at Sameen, and Shaw’s never felt so naked, so exposed, like patient laid out beneath surgical lights. Shaw needs to get out of here, she needs to leave; she doesn’t even have it in her to yell anymore, like all her rage at Root that she’d been holding inside her had evaporated, had been boiled off by the heat of the lights aimed at her, and all that’s left behind is… nothing. Dry earth, cracked and brittle after years of drought. Without that anger, Sameen is an empty, lifeless riverbank, and Root will be able to tell. The way their eyes are locked together, there’s no way Root won’t see. The way Root’s looking at her it’s like she’s staring right into her sou—

Fuck. Right into her soul.

 

**…**

 

“Sameen?” Root asks gently.

(Why did Shaw give Root her first name? _Captain Shaw_ —she should have said Captain Shaw. She’s a Captain, a highly decorated Captain in the United States Marine Corps.)

Root moves to step out from behind her setup, towards Shaw, but she stops herself. She’s waiting for her to say something, Shaw realizes. Fuck. Say something.

“No- Root- look, it’s fine,” Shaw says, voice stilted as she slides off the stool looking anywhere but at Root. “I just- this was a mistake. I didn’t actually mean to do thi- I have to go.”

“Wait—Sameen.” Shaw’s halfway to the door when Root’s hand grasps her shoulder. She tenses slightly at the contact, but stops nonetheless. Inhaling sharply, she slowly turns to face Root again.

When their eyes meet this time, Shaw relaxes. Whatever had happened between them just then is gone. Away from the glare of the lights, the world has righted itself again, and as Root stares at her, Shaw breathes deeply a few times just to make sure she can.

“Just- Before you leave, just let me show you something. Please.” Root looks earnest, a little nervous, and Shaw finds herself nodding before she’d even realized she’d decided to stay.

Root leads her back to the setup at the center of the room, only this time they’re both standing behind the camera. “Do you know how this works?” Without waiting for an answer, she continues, “Here, let me show you.”

Shaw scoffs, stepping back as she realizes what Root’s doing. “Are you serious right now? I’m not a child hiding from a monster under the bed, you don’t have to show me how it works so I won’t be scared of it anymore,” she practically snarls at Root. Stopping herself, Shaw inhales deeply and softens before continuing. “I’m not scared of your damn camera, this is just… It’s not my thing, okay. I wasn’t coming here today to get my picture taken. Actually, I was—“

“—going to come yell at me for exploiting you. Or- your soldiers, because I don’t think anyone could exploit _you_. Against your will, anyways.” Root can’t help smirking slightly, but when she continues she’s entirely serious. “You were going to tell me off for objectifying the men and women who defend our country, for belittling what you do and what you go through every day, throwing yourselves in front of bullets for people you don’t even know, which is something I could never understand. Am I close?”

“How did-”

“I heard. It’s a small base.”

“So you knew? When I came-”

“Yeah. I did.”

Root’s not really smiling, but she doesn’t seem offended either. Her face just looks calm, relaxed. The woman’s not angry, Sameen realizes, not rushing to defend herself, not embarrassed. Shaw doesn’t know how to react to this—this not-anger, not-defensiveness, not-embarrassment—so she just waits for Root to continue.

“I wasn’t being condescending,” Root explains, and Shaw believes her. “I just wanted to know if you’d used one of these before.”

Sameen clears her throat. “Well. No.”

“Okay, then.” Root chuckles softly. “So let me show you how this works.” She looks at Shaw expectantly, eyebrows raised and the ghost of a smile on her lips, as if she’s daring Sameen to stop her again.

Shaw doesn’t. She just keeps looking warily at Root, even as Root starts to explain the camera to her. _Why?_ she wants to ask, and when Root glances back up at her it’s like she knows.

 _You’ll see._ Root smirks slightly, grasping Shaw’s hand and placing it over camera’s grip, sliding her own over Shaw’s in the process.

Sameen hadn’t realized how close they were until then, but she can almost feel Root’s body against her back, Root’s breath on her neck, Root’s fingers threading between hers. Before she can react, though, Root steps back, out of Shaw’s space, and saunters over to the other side of the camera, grinning.

“So I think you’ve got the idea,” Root’s voice is bright again, cutting into the heaviness of the silence that had fallen between them. “You’re smart, you can figure the rest out.” She settles herself on the stool in front of the camera, exhaling as she clasps her hands together.

“Take my photo.”

Shaw just stares at her, eyebrows raised with a reluctant smile pulling at the corner of her mouth.

“Root…”

“Take my photo.” She repeats, grinning like she’s a kid at the mall telling Santa the one thing she wants most in the world.

Shaw huffs, lips pursed, but it’s only to stop herself from smiling. “Why?” she finally asks. She doesn’t look away from Root, but the eyeroll is practically audible in her voice.

“Why not?”

Shaw really does roll her eyes this time, but then she just shrugs and sighs before leaning down to look through the viewfinder. It’s not a new sensation for her—she’s had people in her sights more times than she can count, but it usually ends in a very different way.

Root falls silent as Shaw starts to take a few trial shots, getting used to the feel of camera, the heft of it when she lifts it off the tripod, the resistance of the aperture ring.

Root doesn’t smile at her, doesn’t really even pose at all. She just faces the camera (faces Shaw) straight on, and waits. There’s no expression on her face—she’s not smiling, she’s not anything at all—but somehow it just looks so _open_ , so genuine and solid and real, that Shaw thinks Root’s nothing is like the nothing of the universe, vast and endless (and dangerous and terrifying) and encompassing everything that ever was inside of it. Shaw can only look at it, _really_ look at it, for a moment before she starts to feel like she’s getting sucked in, like it’s going to consume her, so averts her eyes and focuses her attention back on the camera, fiddling with the shutter speed and aperture some more even though she’d already set them ages ago.

She composes a few more shots with her eye glued to the viewfinder. Somehow it’s easier this way, like the half a dozen glass elements in the lens are keeping the two of them half a dozen degrees of separation away from each other. Shaw actually kind of likes this, she realizes as she stares unwaveringly at Root through the camera. She catalogs every inch of Root’s face as she photographs her, every movement, every microexpression, and somehow it feels simultaneously like the most intimate thing Shaw’s ever done and like it’s not intimate at all.

Shaw suddenly realizes they’ve been silent for a good ten minutes while she’s been observing Root through the camera. She steps back and stretches, spine cracking at the barest twist of her torso. Root stretches then, too, but mostly she just looks at Shaw with her head tilted and a smile spreading across her face.

Surprisingly, _Shaw_ is the one who breaks the silence.

“So what was your plan, originally. When I first showed up. Get me into the chair and, what? Did you want to include me in your _book_?” Sameen teases. She grabs the remote shutter release and starts snapping photos again, but now she’s looking at Root over the top of the camera.

“Honestly I hadn’t quite thought that far yet before you got here. But then you showed up and I saw you and I just… I really wanted to take your picture. I knew I couldn’t let you leave before I did.” There’s something reverent, soft and pure, in Root’s voice that gnaws at Sameen, but she doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Well you still haven’t.” Shaw points out wryly. “Taken my picture.”

“Well then I guess I can’t let you leave.”

At that, Shaw just steps out from behind the camera and walks over to where Root’s sitting. She doesn’t say anything, just stands in front of Root and glances briefly down at the stool and back up again, eyebrows raised.

Root holds her stare for only a moment, but it stretches between them as Root languorously slides herself off the stool. She plants her feet on the ground right in front of Shaw’s, and when she stands up straight their bodies are almost pressed together. With their faces so close, Shaw has to lift her chin slightly to hold Root’s gaze, but for a moment neither of them looks away.

Root reaches up to fix Shaw’s hair again, tucking away the few strands that simply refuse to stay out of her face, before she slides herself out from between Shaw and the stool and makes her way back to the camera.

They both settle back into their respective positions, Shaw seated in front of the camera and Root standing behind it. Root leans down to look into the viewfinder, but before she begins, she suddenly stops and straightens herself again. “So you’re sure you’re not going to run away this time? _Captain?_ ”

“Shut up.”

“Okay. Just checking,” Root says innocently. “All I want is to take your picture.”

Their eyes lock again and Sameen doesn’t look away.

After a moment, she quirks her eyebrow, shaking her head slightly even as she feels a smile creep up on her lips.

“I’m not going in your damn book.”


End file.
